


The Pettigrew Incident

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Murder, Female Harry Potter, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 20:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: In which there is mystery, mayhem, maps and of course murder.





	The Pettigrew Incident

**Author's Note:**

> A brief note that this is NOT CANON to "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" for obvious reasons.

It was Friday when she decided that she was obligated as a vague acquaintance to do something about Ron’s little problem.

 

She had known the problem since Tuesday, had been aware of the implications of the problem after Wizard Lenin’s explanation that night, but it had taken her some time to verify her suspicions as well as to decide if she and Ron Weasley had enough of a relationship to justify her going out of her way for him.

 

Of course in the end it wasn’t really about Ron Weasley, Ron, as far as he was concerned was more like a malfunctioning piece of software than an actual person. He tried but his unhealthy fixation on snakes as well as his obsession with her destruction of Slytherin made him more than a bit odd to talk to. In the end it was more because of Neville, who slept in the same room as Ron, that she decided that something would have to be done and Ron would have to be told.

 

It had started that Tuesday, having completed the various initiation rituals, such as chanting things menacingly backwards, submitting a few general prank ideas, and reenacting several scenes from Monty Python she had finally been allowed to become a full member of the cult of chaos. The Weasley twins, doppelgangers that they were, were one of the few truly interesting things to exist within Hogwarts.

 

They were like the softer and more child friendly version of Lily Riddle and for that Lily appreciated them greatly. Besides there was something about abandoned classrooms filled with candles, mirrors, and dark robed people that was just so menacing and cool that she couldn’t resist. Rabbit only seemed to add to the atmosphere as he watched blankly from on top of a desk turned alter.

 

“Now that you have passed all our trials it is time that we showed you the greatest secret of all.” One of the doppelgangers said causing the other to reply, “Yes, it is time, we have delayed your destiny long enough.”

 

_“Now that’s just overdramatic.”_ Wizard Lenin commented feeling all in all a little insulted by the whole display, perhaps because it too greatly resembled his own Hindenburgist meetings, _“As someone who actually has a destiny that may or may not have been detailed by a prophecy it’s a bit petty to bring it into casual conversation.”_

 

_“But maybe it is my destiny.”_ Lily pointed out, not entirely certain what her destiny was, but the idea that it could be presented to her with this atmosphere and at this very moment pretty neat.

 

And with that they brought out before her a blank piece of parchment. “Behold!”

 

She blinked blankly at the yellowed paper, wondering if the twins were perhaps as glitchy as their younger brother, or perhaps it detailed whatever she expected it to and having expected nothing it presented her with empty parchment. She tried thinking about blowing up the Death Star, but nothing appeared on the paper, and it appeared that her destiny was ultimately fruitless.

 

_“That’s a little deep for the Weasley twins.”_ Wizard Lenin commented snidely, having not enjoyed any of the initiations, or really anything to do with the pair. As a proletariat student he’d always been too focused on the injustices of capitalism to focus on mayhem and chaos so as such he was never really amused by what the Weasley twins called pranks.

 

That being said Lily didn’t necessarily understand why the doppelgangers did what they did, as far as she could tell they had started up their own feud with the Slytherins without ever having met Snape in Diagon Alley or having their clothing destroyed, but they seemed to have made quite the efficient system and it certainly kept things from getting dull.

 

“I always wanted paper for a destiny.” She commented instead at which point they both grinned at her, one of them tapping her on the head as if she was a small and adorable thing, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

 

“So much potential, George, so much potential!” Said the first doppelganger unwittingly quoting professor Flitwick but then it was all business again and the cult like setting was back on, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good!”

 

And with that the paper was no longer just paper.

 

_“Now this,”_ Wizard Lenin commented, _“Is slightly more interesting.”_

 

The paper was a map of a castle, not every room according to Wizard Lenin, the basement beneath the castle known as the Chamber of Secrets was missing along with something called the Room of Requirement but the passages in and out of the school had been thoroughly marked but more than that it seemed that every single person that was in the castle was marked and tracked on the map.

 

In a side classroom Eleanor Potter, Fred Weasley, and George Weasley could be seen clustered while elsewhere in his office Severus Snape could be seen lounging.

 

_“And you said Big Brother didn’t exist!”_ She said to Wizard Lenin grinning at the map, because they were indeed always watching, in Hogwarts at the very least.

 

_“This did not exist when I was a student, I certainly would have heard about it… This must have been created after I had gone to school.”_ From the sound of it had the map existed when Wizard Lenin was a student then he would have taken it long ago and no one would have seen it since. He sounded very interested in the map and even just staring at it she caught wild thoughts on how it was made, what spells they used to connect with the wards, and already there were vague plans for Lily to make them a new and improved version of the map.

 

“Pretty neat, huh?” She turned to see one of the doppelgangers smiling at her with mischief in his eyes, “So very many possibilities.”

 

“Stole it off of Filch, never regretted that Fred.”

 

“Certainly not George.”

 

“Most definitely very neat,” Lily said looking through the map. Overall it was quite impressive but there were a few things missing. One was the few missing rooms that Wizard Lenin had noted, but there were also a few oddities regarding people.

 

Quirrell the squirrel for example, had not been labeled as Quirinus Quirrell or Squirrel or anything resembling his name but rather an almost unintelligible scribble that came out something like “Tuiominus Riderell” but could also be “Quirrelldemort” if she squinted.

 

Over her head was the name Eleanor Potter, without any mention of Wizard Lenin or the fact that she secretly referred to herself as Lily, perhaps Eleanor Potter as a label included Wizard Lenin inside, a sort of umbrella term for the pair of them but then again it seemed like an odd thing to miss.

 

Perhaps the oddest of all, was that when her eyes found Neville’s name, near Ron’s, Seamus’, and Dean’s there was another name in there as well.

 

“Peter Pettigrew?” She asked, she didn’t know all the Gyrffindors but after becoming familiar with Neville she thought it best to at least know the names of his associates. To miss one of the boys in his room would have been a bit odd on her part especially after all the effort she had gone through just to label them in her head correctly.

 

_“Wormtail? What on earth is he doing here?”_ Came Wizard Lenin’s incredulous response from inside her head,  and with it the image of a young, fat, and very nervous looking man on his hands and knees kissing Wizard Lenin’s feet much to Wizard Lenin’s discomfort.

 

“Hm?” Fred and George took a look at the map but by that time the name had hidden itself under Ron’s. They searched the map with quiet intensity though, but eventually seemed to give up.

 

“I think your map is a bit glitchy, but it is glitch manipulation so you know how that goes, on the whole I approve.”

 

“Yeah, if Peter Pettigrew’s name is showing up there must be something wrong with it.” One of the doppelgangers said in a strangely sober tone.

 

“Course, nothing’s ever been wrong with it before.”

 

“Although there is that weirdness with Quirrell’s name.”

 

“Figure that’s just because of the whole Alabania thing.”

 

“Maybe his stutter has its own name. My stutter would be called Fred.”

 

“Oh thank you George, mine would be called George.”

 

“Then it’d be Fred squared and George squared and mum would never get it right.” They said in unison grinning at each other but in the meantime Lily was still inspecting the map deciding what to fix and how she might go about it with Wizard Lenin’s expertise. He was still strangely distracted though by the thought of that fat young Peter Pettigrew almost on top of Ron Weasley, and that seemed to bring a darker image that he really didn’t want to think about.

 

“So who is this Pettigrew person?” Lily asked and received two answers simultaneously, one from the twins, and one from Wizard Lenin.

 

“He’s a war hero, after Sirius Black betrayed your family and gave their location to Voldemort he tried to warn you all in time and… Well, he didn’t make it in time, and afterwards Black came for him and…”

 

The war, Lord Hindenburg’s revolution, hung so heavily in those words that the corpses of her parents as well as Peter Pettigrew seemed as if they were already in the same room. The shadows themselves were painted darker by the atmosphere.

 

Wizard Lenin, inside her head, had a bit of a different story.

 

_“The most self-preserving human being I’ve ever seen, so much so that he actually resembles a rat in being able to squeeze through abominably small places without any regard for his dignity.”_ Wizard Lenin started, a small current of amusement running through him when trying to picture Pettigrew squeezing through small holes, and then a feeling of horror and disgust as the name Ron Weasley became associated with that thought at which point he tried to change tracks before Lily could get any real mental image.

_“As I understand it he was friends with your jackass of a father during school, being labeled as the friend that no one liked and affectionately called Wormtail, friendship really is a wonderful thing._

_Regardless by the time they exited school his only friends were the werewolf Lupin, your charismatic but somewhat idiotic father, and his psychotic friend Sirius Black. Immediately on leaving school, as my revolution was in full swing at this point, Black, Potter, and Lupin joined the opposing faction and only real resistance movement towards me known as the Order of the Phoenix headed by Dumbledore. Pettigrew, at this point, was expected to join up or risk being friendless and alone for the rest of his life. For a few years it worked fairly well, they were school children and hardly worth my time, it wasn’t until the prophecy was delivered that Pettigrew realized that he was on the wrong side and was going to get himself killed.”_ Here she was presented with the image of a slightly older Pettigrew with his far more attractive and thin friends, each of them looking determined and eager for the battle, while Pettigrew just looked as if he wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

 

_“The prophecy was unusually specific regarding future events and from the details given it was clear that one of two children could become problematic for me in the future. One was you, your family immediately went into hiding under Dumbledore’s protection and the use of the fidelis charm. Fidelis, while very powerful, requires not only a powerful castor but also someone to be labeled secret keeper; in other words someone you can trust with your location._

_Feeling, that as an Order member, he could not simply flee to India and that I would track him down and slaughter him (which is true had I taken Britain) he felt his only choice was to change sides and present me with something worthy of taking him on as a spy and a Death Eater. He convinced your parents to allow him to be the secret keeper rather than Sirius Black, as no one would suspect someone as cowardly as him to possess the secret and that the werewolf Lupin might betray them all and say that Black was the secret keeper, and strangely enough that idiotic logic worked. Only a little while later he presented me with the Potters’ location and thus the ability to ambush them unawares. The rest, as they say, is history.”_ He added with a final mental shrug.

 

Lily thought on it, nowhere in there did Wizard Lenin say that Pettigrew was dead but at the same time he had been a bit distracted with green death lasers at the time. She had seen it though, that name for an instant before Ron’s had smothered it.

 

_“Don’t remind me.”_ Wizard Lenin snapped that mental image he was desperately attempting to suppress rearing its ugly head again.

 

She kept thinking about it later, the trouble was that the errors made too much sense to be mere glitches. The rooms not drawn were ones that, according to Wizard Lenin, were notoriously difficult to find. Quirrell the squirrel probably was secretly named “Unintelligble Scribble” and was trying to hide it out of pure embarrassment. Ellie Potter, being more of an idea than either Lily or Wizard Lenin, probably did encompass them both.

 

They weren’t random errors, and for that she couldn’t help but wonder why Pettigrew’s name had shown up on the map. She looked at the map a few more times that night, but Pettigrew’s name never did disappear, sometimes it was covered up by others and most often by Ron’s but it was always lurking just out of sight.

 

_“Maybe he’s invisible.”_ Lily commented to Wizard Lenin after shenanigans with the twins had finished and the plots and plans for the week were set into place. _“Or maybe he’s a ghost that Rabbit forgot to eat.”_

 

_“Ghosts are not invisible, their more transparent than anything.”_ Wizard Lenin commented in thought, not quite sure what to make of it, he was too focused on making their own version of the map to really focus on the issue of Peter Pettigrew.

 

Eventually though, after it seemed he had designed the basic layout of the thing in his head, he thought about it and he brought up the image of a fat rat gorging itself on candy. _“If I’m remembering correctly Ron has a useless rat named Scabbers?”_

 

Lily, being the only student who actually carried around her familiar with her at all times, hadn’t seen Scabbers recently but she did remember him very clearly. Mostly about him failing to turn yellow and Hermione Granger screaming at her about something that was tremendously stupid. 

 

_“He was fairly useless.”_ Lily remarked wondering what Wizard Lenin could possibly getting at with Ron’s absurdly fat rat.

 

_“If I’m remembering correctly, from what Pettigrew told me, the reason he was called Wormtail by his dear friends was because his animagus form was a rat.”_

 

Lily stopped in the midst of her walk back to the dungeon, Rabbit on her head digging in slightly into her hair so as to remain perched, _“Oh… Well shit.”_

 

The only image Lily had to associate with the feelings emanating from Wizard Lenin as they took that fact in was Severus Snape leaning over her bed in a bathrobe with a stick in his hand when she was only five years old. Wizard Lenin had darker images that he rapidly shifted through so as not to give her a clear idea but the feeling was the same for both of them.

 

_“That’s… Well… Maybe Scabbers really is just a rat?”_

 

That question was left unanswered by both of them because they both seemed to agree that Scabbers probably was just as much a rat as Rabbit was a rabbit.

 

So she had learned on the way to Friday that Scabbers had been in the family for far longer than the average obese rat’s life span, that Percy had found him in the yard one night and that he had run into Percy’s arms as if he was a life preserver; an action that according to everything Lily knew as well as Wizard Lenin really wasn’t rat like.

 

The clincher though had been visiting Death in the middle of the week for advice.

 

At the name Death had sneered, an expression so foreign to his face that it took Lily a moment to process it, “Wormtail, unfortunately I am familiar.”

 

 Drinking tea in the station even Wizard Lenin had paused to regard Death, and had commented lightly, “You know, this is the first time I’ve held the same opinion as you without any reservations.”

 

Death said nothing brushing off the comment with an expression of distaste as if the very name Pettigrew brought a sour taste to his mouth. Lily took that opportunity to ask the more important question, “So, you wouldn’t happen to know if Ron’s rat Scabbers is Peter Pettigrew in disguise?”

 

“Yes.” He said shortly as he sipped tea.

 

“Yes?” Lily asked wondering if that meant that yes he knew or that yes it really was Pettigrew.

 

“Yes, Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail, the betrayer of your family for his own worthless hide is indeed Scabbers.” Death said and then eyed Lily speculatively, “Has Sirius Black appeared by any chance?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Your father’s psychotic best friend.” Wizard Lenin commented before Death got the chance.

 

“He’s hardly psychotic,” Death responded looking at Wizard Lenin with slightly narrowed eyes, “Besides, I’d like to see you after a decade in Azkaban.”

 

“Oh I’m sure he’s even worse now than he was back then.”

 

Death paused, as if considering responding to that, but then he gave up and instead turned his attention back to Lily explaining, “I never found out Scabbers’ true nature until Sirius Black started hunting him down. I was simply wondering how you knew to look for oddities regarding Scabbers before I did.”

 

The rest of the conversation was more explanation than anything else but it remained clear even as she was blinking back into reality, clutching Rabbit close to her, that something might have to be done.

 

And in the end, that Friday she first approached Ron Weasley, it was for Neville Longbottom and not for Ron himself.

 

At her approach he broke into a wild grin, overshadowing Neville’s shyer smile by miles, as much as he disliked her being around the twins he loved the results in Slytherin’s house as well as the routinely decreasing house points.

 

Wizard Lenin had suggested tact, but even he was uncertain how one informed another that their pet rat was secretly a middle aged man.

 

“Ron,” She greeted as she sat down pondering her next words with great care. Then she decided that it was best to simply be direct and he could take it as he would, “I’m afraid I have some unpleasant news. Your rat isn’t a rat, he’s a fat middle aged man who’s a murderer and given his situation may be a pedophile.”

 

The resident Gryffindors stared at her for a few moments, pausing in eating their breakfast, and then without any care for the seriousness of the situation they continued to eat their breakfast.

 

Ron, for his own part, looked mildly perplexed for only a moment before saying, “Oh is this another the rabbit isn’t really a rabbit thing?”

 

“Rabbit really isn’t a rabbit and your rat isn’t a rat.” She said pounding her fists on the table as uncle Vernon sometimes did that when he wanted people to shut up and listen to his authority but no one seemed to care how loud her hands clattered against the table.

 

“Seriously Ellie, it wasn’t that funny with the bunny, I think the joke’s kind of died.” Ron said in between stuffing his face with croissants.

 

“What do you mean Ron’s rat is a middle aged man?” Neville asked peering at her with intensity as well as confusion, as if trying to decide whether to take her seriously or not.

 

“He’s Peter Pettigrew.” Lily explained and then gave an abridged version of what Death and Wizard Lenin had told her about the man and his disappearance ten years before as well as his presumed death.

 

After that there had been much arguing with Ron saying it was ridiculous and not that funny, as if humor was somehow her intention, and Neville uncertain of all of it and Seamus and Dean simply watching as if they were watching a quidditch match. After a rather tense (and as usual explosive) double Potions session they had entered the Gryffindor common room to settle the argument.

 

There was some reservations about whether Lily should be allowed in but then they decided that since it was Lily and that she was ensuring Gryffindor’s house cup victory more than any Gryffindor was that it should be all well and good. Soon enough they were all standing in an alarmingly gold and red room and circled around a very fat and somewhat terrified rat.

 

“He’s a rat, Ellie, look at him!” Ron said pointing to the rat with an accusing finger.

 

“He does look pretty rat-like.” Dean commented, being altogether useless as he and Seamus usually were.

 

“Looking rat-like isn’t the point, things don’t have to look to be.” Lily argued before snapping, “Besides don’t you pseudo glitch manipulators have all sorts of glamours and disguises, this shouldn’t be a difficult concept.”

 

“You mean like polyjuice?” Neville asked before he was quickly interrupted by Ron.

 

“Polyjuice potion wouldn’t make him a rat, Ellie! Face it, Scabbers really is just Scabbers.” It was perhaps the first time Ron had been put out with her since she had redeemed herself in humiliating Slytherin and she wondered if she pushed too hard if Ron wouldn’t resort back to his fear and hatred of snakes.

 

“Animagus might.” Neville said looking at Scabbers with a critical eye and then back to Ellie, “There are ways to test for it I think.”

 

“You’re just afraid that I’m right and that you sleep with a fat, middle aged, murdering, and possibly pedophilic man on your pillow!” Lily finally bit out scathingly feeling that Neville’s sensible suggestions weren’t getting through Ron’s malfunctioning head.

 

And that was about where the civilized conversation ended and Lily was thrown out of the common room by Ron. Neville followed her out into the hallway looking sheepish, “Sorry about Ron, well you know how he gets… Do you really think he’s… and that Pettigrew…”

 

“I’m fairly certain.” Lily said before adding for clarification’s sake, “As certain as anyone can be of anything in an uncertain universe.”

 

With that she turned to make her way back to the basement, then just before she left the hallway she turned back and looked at him one last time, “Just keep your eyes out, from what I understand fat middle aged men on your pillow are… unpleasant.”

 

He cracked a slight smile and said, “That’s… um… well that’s probably true.”

 

As it was the problem would be more or less solved that night, no one could say that Peter Pettigrew let things lie. That night, dreaming with Wizard Lenin, they found themselves in a recreation of Diagon Alley looking a little brighter and more cheery than it did in real life. She had the feeling that it was colored by nostalgia more than anything else, all the things that the Wizarding world had promised the young working class Wizard Lenin.

 

To her it looked more like a post card than a place, disillusionment was in the very air.

 

“No one ever listens.” Lily finally said just staring out at the memories of people window shopping and strolling through the streets.

 

“It does seem to be a universal theme in life.” Wizard Lenin commented drily, “They generally don’t listen to anyone sensible, you have to force them to listen.”

 

“But I don’t have time to force them to listen for their own good.” Lily said, “And why should I, it isn’t really my business, is it? If it wasn’t for Neville I wouldn’t bother at all, and I guess now that he knows I don’t have a reason to push. Still, they’d all live a little while longer if they weren’t so thick.”

 

“Undoubtedly true.”

 

They probably would have gone on like that for some time, Lily venting her frustrations with Wizard Lenin making dry but ultimately worthless remarks every once in a while all with that odd smile on his face, but as it was they were interrupted. It was a strangely familiar feeling, a prickling throughout the world, and the sense that something was wrong.

 

She didn’t realize it at the time but it was very similar to that feeling she’d had when Snape had entered her room six years before.

 

So opening her eyes she found a fat and homeless looking man who really did resemble a rat and in her head the image of the younger Peter Pettigrew was brought up and compared with him.

 

“Oh, shit.”

 

There were no words or warnings from Wizard Lenin at that point only a wordless horror as those images he had been hiding in his head all day came to the front of their combined consciousness with unnatural clarity. Only instead of Ron naked, sweating, and screaming beneath the man it was Lily.

 

They really hadn’t needed any words at that point, as he pointed his wand at her head, offering her a toothy rat smile that was far too similar to the one Wizard Lenin had painted in her mind there was no thought of anything else to do.

 

Grabbing a quill on her desk it transformed in her hand into a knife and it was only after much screaming on both hers and his part did she realize that he was no longer moving and that the carpet was covered in blood.

 

Her roommates at that point woke up to the noise and saw Lily straddling the strange fat man positively covered in blood and as dark as they claimed to be and as much as they claimed to love pure blood it didn’t stop them from screaming in terror.

 

A few glitches to send them back to bed and erase their memories later Lily stared down at the corpse of Peter Pettigrew panting and feeling calm ease back into her.

 

_“Well, I suppose that’s one way to solve the problem.”_ Wizard Lenin finally said, and while his words had a calm tone there was an undercurrent to them that was far more serious, dark images that Lily still didn’t quite understand were still far too bright in his consciousness.

 

_“We’re going to have to get rid of the corpse.”_ Lily said as she wiped the blood from her face and transformed the knife back into its original quill form. It was odd, she’d seen death plenty of times before, but there was something about this one that gave her more pause than the others. As Lily Riddle her reputation handled most of the violence for her, no one expected to take on Lily Riddle and live, and while occasionally she’d have to deal with someone it was more distant than this. This was close, so terribly close.

 

Wizard Lenin considered the various ways in which a corpse might be disposed of, most of them involved heavy duty cleaning spells that were sure to set off alarm bells for the headmaster, and he suspected that a glitch to simply get rid of the body might produce similar results and there was always the thought that he was never quite certain what glitches did and didn’t like putting too much reliance on them.

 

So it was that Lily, with Rabbit perched on her head, in her pajamas wandered the hallways with a transfigured wheelbarrow, a vague ward of disinterest cast about her, and a corpse dangling from the inside of the wheelbarrow  and headed for the third floor corridor. After all, she thought to herself, if certain death was really inside then surely it could dispose of a corpse for her or perhaps even eat it.

 

_“I suppose it’s as good a solution as anything, if his body is found they can simply assume that he had snuck into the castle for whatever it is that Dumbledore is guarding. It will also give us a chance to see firsthand what exactly these defenses do to the human body.”_ Wizard Lenin commented on the way as Lily kept an eye out for any prefect or professor she might run into, the ward should keep them distracted but it was best to be prepared.

 

_“Of course, we could always blame the Parkinson girl.”_ He added almost distantly.

 

_“Blame Dog Face?”_ Lily couldn’t picture how they could possibly pin it on Pansy Parkinson, as obnoxious as she was Lily didn’t know how she’d pin so very many stab wounds on an eleven year old girl who whined and cried to Draco Malfoy to solve her problems for her.

 

_“Certainly, if she believes she’s done it.”_ He paused then as if debating what to tell her and then continued, _“When I first killed, and I was left with the aftermath, I gave false memories to another person and it went by without a hitch.”_

 

She wasn’t certain how she felt about it, because even if Pansy Parkinson believed she had killed Peter Pettigrew she didn’t think anyone would necessarily believe it. The image of Pansy Parkinson with a knife over the fat man was one that was hard to picture.

 

He conceded that silently in her head but it was all beside the point because they knew exactly where to dump the corpse. Or at least, that was the plan, unfortunately she wasn’t the only person who had the idea of checking out the corridor very late at night.

 

Quirrell the squirrel stood twitching and pacing outside the door looking far more squirrel like than usual, or perhaps he resembled a scribble, it was hard to tell at that point simply because that even seeing him was giving her a migraine.

 

At the sound of the squeaking wheelbarrow he turned towards her abruptly, his wand pointed at her but then as he took in the sight of her it lowered slightly, and his face instead became one of twitching confusion. It was strange, she could have sworn her distraction glitch was strong enough to allow her to slip by him, but it seemed the shock of seeing her had broken it completely.

 

_“Of course he would be here.”_ Lenin said in annoyance, both of them reasoning that they could kill Quirrell too if they really had to and just add another corpse to the wheelbarrow. Even looking at him, just looking directly at him, her headache increased to monumental amounts as if his mere existence just frayed on her nerves.

 

They stared at each other for a few moments, him twitching with a turban and smelling as usual like garlic fries at a carnival, and her covered in blood in her pajamas with Rabbit on her head, a wheelbarrow in hand, and the corpse of a fat man inside.

 

Finally after a decent amount of silence she said, “If you can manage to ask without stuttering I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

 

He stared at her, blinked for a moment, and then seemed to shift. With what appeared to be great effort and pain he stopped twitching and looked at her, truly looked, and Quirrell’s dark eyes seemed to bore straight through her to where her deepest thoughts dwelled. Finally he said, “And, what, Miss Potter, brings you here in the dead of night with… Peter Pettigrew?”

 

She stared back at him in shock, not quite sure what to make of it, he had been perfectly coherent but more than that he had been precise. His words had been clear and direct and cutting, and nothing like what Quirrell usually sounded like.

 

“To be honest I expected you to stutter.” Lily finally said to which his eyebrows descended slightly.

 

“Did you?”

 

“Well, you are sort of famous for it professor Squirrel.” She pointed out, it was surprising though how even that one sentence managed to increase her headache for no reason. She had assumed it was how much he annoyed her but perhaps it was something else, it might have been the overwhelming sent of garlic as he stalked closer to her moving stiffly but with a determined expression that she’d only ever seen on Wizard Lenin.

 

“That… doesn’t really answer my question though, does it?” He seemed out of breath, as if walking those few steps to where he was standing right before her and looking down had exhausted him.

 

“Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t.” Lily said and looked down at the corpse and then back up at him, “Well, long story short is that Ron’s rat Scabbers was secretly Peter Pettigrew the whole time, and when I told Ron that he got upset and then Scabbers in man form showed up in my room and… Well… Um… This happened?”

 

She stopped then and observed him, she had never realized that without the stutter he was vaguely competent, he had an air of confidence that just wasn’t there in the classroom even as he was hunched over and panting looking as if he was trying to concentrate on something very hard.

 

“You’re a Defense Professor.” She pointed out.

 

He said nothing, merely nodded slightly, so she continued, “I’ll bet you know lots of things that are more useful and relevant than what they teach us in that stupid book. Like, you wouldn’t happen to know how to dispose of corpses without heavy duty cleaning spells that would alert the headmaster would you?”

 

He looked up at her sharply and then back at the floor, finally, again with a curious stiffness he shook his head.

 

“Pity.” She said and then moved past him towards the door, he stared at her incredulously, “What are you doing?!”

 

“Disposing of the corpse, I mean it is supposed to be certain death, and I think certain death can get kind of hungry.” Lily said wondering why he looked so very alarmed at the prospect of her entering the third floor corridor.

 

_“He’s taking this alarmingly well.”_ Wizard Lenin noted in her mind and she stopped to reevaluate him, it was true, a normal professor or person would be in hysterics at the sight of the dead Peter Pettigrew rotting in a wheelbarrow but other than the question of what she was doing here with a dead body he had said nothing on the subject.

 

“Professor Squirrel, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is it that brings you here this fine evening?” She asked her eyes narrowing and again he stiffened as if realizing his error but he held himself together, shaking as he was, and smiled back at her.

 

“Ah, I hadn’t expected you to be this observent under the present circumstances.” With a deliberateness that she’d never seen in him before he held his wand out in front of her, “I’m afraid…. Miss Po… Po… Potter tha… that… you… I… can’t le.. let… you… you…”

 

Whether he was going to say live, remember, or anything else Lily didn’t wait to hear. As his stutter and twitching returned she threw him against a wall with a glitch and grabbed his wand out of his hand as he was groaning on the floor. With a thought his memory of their encounter was gone and Lily was high tailing it in the other direction down the stairs and out of the school.

 

_“There’s something off about that man.”_ Wizard Lenin said in a rushed tone as they skidded out of the school, thinking on the distraction glitch he had seen through, the conversation, the headaches, his name on the map, and everything that was just a bit too weird about Quirrell the Squirrel. It seemed that Wizard Lenin had a running theory but that he didn’t wish to acknowledge it in any way but was never the less lurking in his head, whatever it was it certainly wasn’t good.

 

_“Well as long as he doesn’t remember then we won’t have to deal with it, at least until I get rid of this damn body.”_ Normally at Lily Riddle she just gave out corpses to the employees, it seemed like such a waste if she didn’t, and besides given the relatively few deaths it hadn’t been that large of a deal. She wondered if she could mail the corpse to Frank.

 

_“Remember that an owl will have to carry it.”_

 

He did look a bit heavy to be carried by owl, certainly if she wasn’t using glitches already he’d be difficult to push, particularly when they got outside. It was a dark night and very cold, especially in her pajamas, but none the less she pushed out.

 

_“There’s forbidden, lethal, things in the Forbidden Forest, right?”_ She asked, remembering the man eating spiders, surely they would appreciate a tasty snack.

 

_“I suppose but I don’t think the centaurs would appreciate someone sneaking onto their land in order to dispose of a body.”_ He said and by not appreciating he pictured them throwing spears, arrows, and rocks at her head.

 

She stopped moving, that wouldn’t be any good if she couldn’t even reach the spiders. If she left it in the lake it’d probably float to the surface, the third floor corridor meant confronting Squirrel again which given Wizard Lenin’s mounting anxiety about that she wasn’t certain she wanted to do, but the longer she waited the more likely it was that she’d get caught.

 

It seemed that it was time for plan b.

 

The next morning they were awoken by the sound of Pansy Parkinson screaming on top of a very dead and bloody Peter Pettigrew. After Snape had been fetched he had stared incredulously at the fat man and listened as he heard how Pansy had singlehandedly defeated him by stabbing him multiple times with her antique pureblood comb. For a moment Snape had turned to look at Lily who was twiddling her thumbs in the corner and trying to appear that she wasn’t somehow involved.

 

Pansy was taken away for questioning though along with Peter Pettigrew’s corpse and that morning at breakfast Dumbledore, Snape, and Pansy were all missing. At her usual seat in the Gryffindor table Lily observed the hall for noticeable differences but things seemed more or less the same. Quirrell the Squirrel was back to his twitching nervous ways, looking at nothing in particular, merely twitching for the sake of a good twitch.

 

“What’d you do to Scabbers?!”

 

Lily turned to see Ron glaring at her from across the table and she blinked at him before saying, “Well, he turned into Peter Pettigrew, snuck into our room this morning, and was stabbed to death by Pansy Parkinson with a hair comb.”

 

Needless to say Ron was not pleased and the rest had a difficult time believing it. In the end though they had no choice to accept it as, in a very grave speech for Dumbledore, Dumbledore stated that Peter Pettigrew had in fact not been dead for the past ten years but rather according to magical testing was an unregistered animagus and had probably been spending the past ten years in his animal form. For some unknown reason he had snuck into the girls dormitory that night, perhaps to harm Eleanor Potter the girl who lived, and had instead been attacked by Pansy Parkinson.

 

On the whole no one seemed to know what to make of it. For a while everyone walked around in a daze, wondering if this somehow meant that Sirius Black was innocent (because Black had supposedly killed off Pettigrew) but then Pettigrew being alive didn’t necessarily mean that Black wasn’t a mass murdering Death Eater. Hermione, at the Gryffindor table, gave an entire speech about making casual assumptions based on facts that weren’t necessarily relevant. Another thought was what Pettigrew had been doing at Hogwarts and why he had come to attack Lily, if he did come to attack Lily because if he had wanted to kill her off he should have done it years before, and just where had he been the whole time anyway?

 

Ron seemed to be slowly but surely accepting the fact that Scabbers really was a middle aged man, as the facts slowly began to stack together, and spent most of the rest of the day looking rather silent and pale as the implications set in.

 

For the most part Lily was ignored, Snape sent a few glares her way but that was nothing new, Quirrell after the announcement did twitch ominously in her direction but didn’t make any move other than that, and Dumbledore merely looked at her his expression almost unreadable but never the less intense.

 

Only Neville actually approached her.

 

Later, as Saturday progressed she found herself in a dark corner of the library feeling more than a bit exhausted from dragging around a dead body and wondering if it was all worth it or if she just should have lit him on fire.

 

_“Well, that would have been more efficient.”_ Wizard Lenin commented but with it there was the snide afterthought that the Hogwarts wards were certainly set to detect any sort of large fire on the grounds.

 

As it was he considered it mostly over and done with, in the original making of plan b he had more or less accepted that Dumbledore would never believe it no matter how convincing the patch job on Pansy Parkinson’s memories.

 

_“Remember Lily,”_ He had said the night before as Lily had set up the evidence, carefully coating Parkinson’s antique hairbrush in Pettigrew’s blood and repositioning the body to be near the majority of the bloodstains, _“That while he may humor you, may play your games, he does not trust you and the moment you give him an opening he will stab a knife into your back. Convincing Dumbledore cannot be our main goal, if enough of the population is convinced, and if he sees no other reasonable explanation then he will play along and that’s all we can do for now. If we’re lucky he’ll blame it on Quirrell.”_

 

She liked Dumbledore, she was more than willing to admit it, but liking and trusting were two very different things. So she recognized that when he stared over at her and proclaimed that Pansy Parkinson had killed off Pettigrew in self-defense that there had been understanding in his eyes that a chess piece had just been moved. But if Wizard Lenin was right then Dumbledore played a long game and Snape played for Dumbledore, so it would be a while, if ever that these facts were brought into play.

 

It was thinking on these things that she heard shuffling footsteps and then a round pale face peeking through from behind a book shelf. Neville must have been looking for her, if he had travelled all this way to the back of the library. He looked about as nervous as he always did but he also looked a little concerned, flashes of worry darting in and out of his eyes as he stared at her.

 

“Hey Neville,” Lily said in greeting, “What brings you to the books?”

 

He didn’t answer that question, just paused for a bit, and then asked, “Did you do it?”

 

“I find that I mostly do things, Neville, that’s what verbs are for after all.” Lily remarked although this time she was fairly certain on what he was talking about.

 

“Scabbers, I mean Pettigrew… It wasn’t really Pansy was it?”

 

Ah, that, she eyed him for a moment wondering if she should let him know. Judging from his expression it seemed as if he was already convinced that Lily was responsible, and there was something about the thought of misleading Neville that was harder to stomach than misleading the school.

 

“Well, Pansy believes it was Pansy and that’s what really matters.” Lily said with a shrug, Neville wrung his hands slightly and finally said, “I guess, did he… You weren’t hurt were you?”

 

She wondered if anyone had asked her that before, Uncle Death had asked similar things and his expression had been close to what Neville’s was, but she couldn’t recall something like what Neville asked. Doctor Mitchell asked every once in a while, and it was concerned, but it was less familiar and more clinical than Neville’s question was.

 

So she just stared at him and minutely shook her head, “No, he never came close.”

 

Relief dawned a bit in him but the concern didn’t waver, he stood uncertain of himself, and finally seemed to gather the courage for his next question, “If you knew that Scabbers was Pettigrew why didn’t you go to Dumbledore after talking to Ron?”

 

Lily shrugged, “If you haven’t noticed, Neville, I seem to be playing the role of Cassandra in Hogwarts.”

 

“I guess… I’m pretty sure it’s not hard to check though...” He trailed off as if imagining her trying to convince Dumbledore, Snape, or any other authority figure that Scabbers was secretly Peter Pettigrew in disguise.

 

Again she shrugged, “It hardly matters now.”

 

He stared at her for a few moments, as if unsure what to make of that statement, “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

 

They sat in silence for the rest of the hour, Lily staring into space with her thoughts whirling and Neville trying and failing to focus on the essay he was writing, and she wondered if it made any true difference to the world that a rat named Peter Pettigrew was dead.

 

It really didn’t seem like it.

**Author's Note:**

> Written at some point for a 100th review of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" where someone asked what would happen if Lily saw the Marauder's Map and what Pettigrew would look like on there. Well, it ends in Peter's untimely and grusome death.
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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